Pakistani student turns flood trauma work into climate resilience research at Tianjin University

As flood alerts sweep across China this summer, Asma Zafar, a Pakistani PhD student at Tianjin University, is pulled back to painful memories of devastating floods that hit her homeland 13 years ago.

Witnessing families torn apart by the disaster, she spent over a decade delivering grassroots psychological support. She traveled to 300 villages and hosted 1,278 counseling sessions across Pakistan, devoting most of her income to relief work. She realized that even though damaged homes can be rebuilt quickly, trauma recovery takes years. Hoping to turn her field experience into systematic academic solutions, she came to China to study landscape design, mental healing, and climate resilience.

Under the guidance of Professor Zhang Qinying, Zafar built a cross-disciplinary framework linking green spaces to emotional recovery. Beyond academic tutoring, her professor and classmates offered constant warmth: birthday celebrations, dumpling recipes, and hospital visits when she fell ill. "Pakistan gave me my roots; China gave me new branches," Zafar said.

Professor Zhang said Zafar's grassroots experience brings unique value to their joint research, and China's mature post-disaster reconstruction practices can provide feasible references for Pakistan's flood relief.

For Zafar, China-Pakistan friendship lies in small, heartfelt daily moments. After graduation, she plans to take her research back home to help vulnerable flood survivors. Guided by a local proverb, "Slowly, slowly, the container fills", she will keep working to mend broken lives and strengthen people-to-people bonds between the two countries.

Liu Jiayi contributed to this story.